Offworld Trading Company Promotes Conflict at the Corporate Level

It's not hard to see that the future of space exploration and colonization belongs to the corporations. Even now, private companies are already setting their sights on the sky and beyond, looking toward the next lucrative industry. Suffice it to say, space is going to be big business.

It's this premise that drives Offworld Trading Company, the upcoming real-time strategy game from Mohawk Games and Stardock Entertainment, headed to Steam's Early Access program on February 12.

Offworld Trading Company places you in the role of one such upstart company, where the resource-rich surface of Mars is waiting to be harvested in a bid to become the biggest business on the red planet.

But Offworld Trading Company isn't your typical sci-fi strategy game. Lead by Civillization 4 designer Soren Johnson, Mohawk Games has ditched the traditional well-worn path of expansion and conquest through superior firepower in favor of victory through business savvy and cold, hard cash.

Of course, Offworld Trading Company will feature 8-player online competition, free-form skirmishes against the AI, and a dynamic single-player campaign that strings missions together with persistent upgrades between them. However, that's where the similarities to traditional military RTS games begin to fade. You'll never fire a shot in Offworld Trading Company. As the saying goes, it's just business.

If Offworld Trading Company is beginning to sound like something decidedly different in the strategy space, it's because that's the point. Speaking with IGN, Soren Johnson revealed that Mohawk's strategy was to take what they loved about real-time strategy games and flesh it out with new mechanics.

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We wanted a game that fit [the RTS] format but used an entirely different mechanic.

"RTS games have hit a very set pattern. They may have a different setting, but in many ways, they're kind of the same game," Johnson said. "This is coming from a team that really likes RTS Games. We like Company of Heroes, StarCraft, Age of Empires. We love that format. We think that's a great way to play games.

"So we wanted a game that fit that format but used an entirely different mechanic. And the one that we thought would be the most interesting to try is basically borrowing mechanics from like the Tycoon games. It's about running a business, about using your claims to commit to certain types of resources, buying stuff on the free market and then eventually buying people out on the stock market."

The crux of the experience is that player-driven economy on Mars, that dips and surges depending on the actions of the many companies vying for control of the planet. Claiming and harvesting the basic resources on Mars, using them to produce food and other materials, and then buying and selling all of these goods on the market dictates their value in real time.

In order to come out on top, you've got to navigate this on-world economy, buy low and sell high, and then export the martian wares off-world, earning you enough currency to buy up the shares of your rival corporations and wipe them out.

"It's a very robust system," Johnson said. "I keep changing various things about the game, but that core economic aspect has been kind of the same for about a year. It just kind of automatically balances because there's never going to be any one resource that's the best resource."

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Even though this is an RTS, you're not going to be building tanks to go blow up the other guy.

Of course, there's much more to it than that. Looking at what's in demand on the off-world market is a great place to start understanding what your rivals might be doing.

Is food in short supply off-world? Maybe you upgrade as fast as possible and then start overproducing food to sell off-world to earn the cash needed to start buying up rival stock.

The danger lies in having to rely on the on-world economy. If you need chemicals to research technology to create that food, but aren't producing any, you're at the mercy of those companies stockpiling it, driving up the price to keep you in check.

But for opportunistic companies that don't mind getting dirty to get ahead, corporate sabotage is just another commodity for sale in Offworld Trading Company.

You can drop some cash on the black market for an EMP device or power surge to shut down rival production facilities, decimate a resource with an underground nuclear weapon, or just hire on some extra hands to engage in good old-fashioned piracy.

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"We believe that players understand games often much better than their designers do."

"Even though this is an RTS," Johnson said, "you're not ever going to be building tanks to go blow up the other guy. So we wanted some part of the game where you could, you know, mess with the other people.

"When people use the sabotage items, you don't know who did it. There's a lot of accusations going back and forth about who's messing with your stuff. Every time someone buys an item, the price goes up by 50%. At the beginning of the game, an EMP might be 2000 [currency], and then you look down and suddenly it's 3000. So now you know that someone else has bought one."

Though Offworld Trading Company is still in development, and Johnson admits there's still about a year of work ahead, it's already got the makings to be a unique entry in the real-time strategy space.

"We believe the game is balanced and there are multiple strategies," Johnson said, "but we're looking to see if that's true once the game gets out there in the wild. We're releasing it now so that if there is something major we can change it.

"We believe that players understand games often much better than their designers do."

For players looking to take part in the Early Access stage of Offworld Trading Company, it's available today for pre-purchase direct from publisher Stardock. And for a limited two-week window, everyone who purchases can do so for $36 USD, a 10% discount from the actual price of $40.

For more on Offworld Trading Company, real-time strategy, and cutthroat corporate espionage on Mars, stay tuned to IGN.

Brandin Tyrrel is a freelance writer covering games and tech. There's absolutely no reason to follow him on Twitter.